The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly backed secret experiments into schizophrenia on 311 Danish children, most of them from orphanages, during the early 1960s. (AFP Photo)

Several hundred orphans in Denmark were without their consent used in secret experiments backed by the top US foreign spy agency, an explosive new documentary by Danish Radio has revealed.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly backed secret experiments into schizophrenia on 311 Danish children, most of them from orphanages, during the early 1960s, according to a new documentary named The Search for Myself.

The documentary accuses the notorious American spy agency of supporting the experiments at a municipal hospital in Cophenhagen, in contravention of the Nuremberg Code of 1947 that outline ethical restrictions for experiments on humans.

The studies were reportedly meant to investigate a link between heredity and environment in the development of schizophrenia, Danish Radio reported.

#CIA-Backed Secret Experiments on #Danish Orphans

Several 100 children were unknowingly subjected to electrode experiments to reveal psychopathic traits and find links to schizophrenia - documentary The Search for Myself claims.

— Venkatesh Ragupathi (@venkatesh_Ragu) December 29, 2021

Filmmaker, Per Wennick, who participated in these experiments as a child, recalls being placed in a chair, getting electrodes put on his arms, legs, and chest around the heart and having to listen to loud, shrill noises. The test was meant to reveal whether a child had psychopathic traits.

It was very uncomfortable, Wennick is quoted as saying by Danish Radio. And it’s not just my story, it’s the story of many children.

He said he was promised something funny before being taken to hospital.

I think this is a violation of my rights as a citizen in this society. I find it so strange that some people should know more about me than I myself have been aware of, he stressed.

The dubious project was co-financed by a US health service, receiving support from the Human Ecology Fund, which is operated on behalf of the CIA, according to Wennick.

The Danish Welfare Museum’s Jacob Knage Rasmussen called it the first documented case where children under care were used for research purposes in the country.

I do not know of similar attempts, neither in Denmark nor in Scandinavia. It is appalling information that contradicts the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which after World War II was to set some ethical restrictions for experiments on humans Rasmussen stated in an interview to Danish Radio.

Among other things, informed consent was introduced, which today is central to the world of research, he hastened to add.

Danish Radio credited US psychologist Zarnoff A. Mednick, then a professor at the University of Michigan, with the idea behind the research project.

According to the Nuremberg Code, a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation, voluntary consent of a human subject is absolutely essential in any experimentation and the experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society.